Joel Schumacher, the costume-deisgner-turned-director, has died at age 80. Schumacher brought his fashion aesthetic to bear on his iconic films, such as St. Elmo’s Fire, The Lost Boys, Falling Down and two Batman films. He died after a year-long battle with cancer on Monday.
Schumacher took over Batman Forever, starring Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey and Nicole Kidman, from Tim Burton. The film grossed $300 million+. Schumacher, who is openly gay, introduced nipples to the costumes worn by Batman and Robin, and underlined what many saw as a latent homoeroticism between the pair. His last film in the franchise, Batman and Robin, starred George Clooney as Batman and Arnold Schwarzenegger as villain Mr. Freeze. In 2006, Clooney told Barbara Walters that he’d played Batman as gay.
He also directed the feature adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical The Phantom of the Opera, receiving three Oscar noms.